Commentary by William Hawkins:

[Verses received from a genius in the country, (with whom I had some private pique) on perusing my works in manuscript.

My sweet BILLY HAWKIN,What argufies talking,The grammar you put in a fright;You own dear conceitTo you may be sweet,To me 'tis an antidote quite.]

MY ANSWER.My sweet pretty doctor of Malling' fair town,Thou art surely stark mad or a simpleton grown;For no man in his senses could ever have writSuch bombastical nonsense, had he the least wit;But thy poetry, I doubt, has cracked thy brain,And made thee, alas! like thy patients, insane;Or MIDAS'S fate has again come to pass,And thou, my dear doctor, art turn'd to an ass.————Pray send me no more such illiterate stuff,For I think you have made yourself foolish enough.

* The person here alluded to, living at Town Malling, in Kent, and by profession a surgeon, in which art he is very eminent for curing insanity, and not a bad writer in the poetical way.